Sick Baby with a Side of Motherhood Rant

So our little guy has been coughing all week. He hasn't had any other symptoms, just a nasty cough that just keeps getting nastier. Yesterday evening he started wheezing. Sigh. Back to the doctor we go.

My brother and I have both had asthma, although different variations of it, so I'm very familiar with that squeaky whistling sound. I'm out of sick days, and notwithstanding the coughing, Ben's actually been acting very much himself. But still, wheezing is never good. So I sadly made an afternoon appointment for him. My assistant principal babysat my eighth graders for the last ten minutes of school while I dashed home to make it to the appointment on time. While Ben had apparently had a pretty good day, he'd just woken up from his nap coughing like crazy. His pediatrician sighed sadly when she saw us. She could hear him wheezing from across the room. She reiterated what I've mentioned--not really any other symptoms, just the cough and the wheezing. He's had a host of viral infections over the last few months, any one of which (including a recent outbreak of RSV at my school) could have caused bronchitis and whatnot. He's never had asthmatic or allergic symptoms before, so we were both puzzled. So she gave him a breathing treatment to see how he'd do. The wheezing abated, though not completely, so she gave him another. He was actually a champ. He had a few treatments in the hospital when he had pneumonia, and I think his two hospital rounds and whatnot have made him a lot less wary of just about everything from the thermometer to the pulse-ox to the nebulizer. He got a little crabby, but otherwise he took it like a man. After the second treatment, he was still wheezing, though not nearly as bad. So she gave him prescriptions for prednesone and albeuterol for a five-day treatment. If he responds and does great, then he probably has "bronchiolitic wheezing" (like asthma, only for babies, which he would most likely grow out of). If he develops any new symptoms, he probably has bronchiolitis (baby bronchitis) caused by RSV.

I texted a very small handful of people who had known about his coughing week to let them know the "diagnosis." Soon I got a return text about milk causing asthma and whatnot. So I googled it when I got home. Typing in "asthma and milk" brought me a host of holistic healing websites and vitriolic blogs talking about how research proves that milk causes asthma, so STOP GIVING YOUR CHILD MILK RIGHT NOW, AND DON'T PUMP THEIR BODIES FULL OF POISONOUS MEDICINE. I also ran across a fair quantity of websites that intimated that it is unusual and rare for dairy to cause asthma. Most websites (with the exception of the granola ones) stated that there are a multitude of things that could cause asthma and/or wheezing, including but not limited to: pet dander, pollen, underdeveloped/immature lungs, viruses, food allergies, and cockroaches.

I know a lot of people that swear by chiropractics, herbal concoctions, and acupuncture. I know a number of people that treat every illness with a change in diet. Many of those people felt free to hand me their agenda when Ben was in the hospital with pneumonia. And maybe they're right. Maybe if I spend a trillion dollars on chiropractors, herbal concoctions, acupuncture, and gluten-free dairy-free vegan organic food Ben will stop wheezing forever. Maybe he won't. Maybe he's wheezing because he's had more viruses in the last few months than the real housewives of Orange County have had boob jobs. Maybe it's the cockroaches.

Bottom line: motherhood is hard enough without the guilt. I feel like no matter where you're standing, someone is ready to tell you how you're doing it wrong. Whether people are telling you you're endangering your baby because you're risking a home birth, or whether they're accusing you of poisoning your child with albeuterol. Stay-at-home-moms get abused for "not working" and "just" being a mom. Working moms get abused for abandoning their children. "Breast is best," so if you formula feed your a bad mom. If you vaccinate, your kid will be autistic. If you don't he will die of polio. If you let your kid watch TV ever, you're negligent and a bad mom. If you never let him watch TV ever, you're uptight and a bad mom. You can't win if you home-school, private school, or public school. If you spank you're abusive, if you don't you're too permissive. No matter what you do, the world stands in judgment of your parenting.

So here's the deal. Please pray for our little boy. Please pray for wisdom in Matt, myself, and Dr. Carr to get to the bottom of all this. My kid is everlastingly sick, and I'm trying as hard as I can to figure it out so he can get better. I don't need to be fed guilt trips because I'm using modern medicine. I'm all about going natural whenever I can, including now. He's got his homeopathic cough syrup, his eucalyptus chest rub, and his lavender and eucalyptus oils in the vaporizor. But I'm also going to give him a breathing treatment every four hours like I was told because I want him to breath, and if he stops breathing I don't have time to cut out milk to see what happens. And to be quite honest, the granola remedies haven't been doing much. A few friends told me the oils in the vaporizer worked like magic for their kids; last night Ben woke up three times coughing like crazy while it was on. He woke up twice during the rest of the night while it was off. I gave Ben the cough syrup a little over an hour ago, and he's currently coughing his poor lungs out as we speak.

Sigh. Rant done. The good: Ben is happy as can be. He is cute as all get-out. He will be okay.

Giving Elmo a breathing treatment


Watching Elmo while he gets his own breathing treatment